Insurance spat leads to federal charges

Staff report

CORTLAND

A city man threatened to reduce the offices of his “selfish, greedy, money-hungry” insurance provider “to nothing but rubble,” after they denied him a dental claim.

Ronald L. Ellis, 64, of Ivy Hill Circle, is in the Trumbull County jail and is set to be brought up in federal court today on a count of mailing threatening communications.

“You pay this [expletive] claim or I will rain down such blind hatred, fury and rage the likes of which you will never see again in the full extent of your further existence on this ... planet, you selfish, greedy, money-hungry leeches feeding off the money of humankind,” Ellis wrote to United Healthcare’s appeals and grievances office in formal appeal letter postmarked June 11.

That letter was investigated by the provider’s “Threat Assessment Team” and handed over to the FBI, which filed a formal complaint in federal court Tuesday against Ellis.

Ellis also wrote the denied claim was so doctors could “save what teeth I have left so that I can get by for the rest of my [expletive] sad existence on this [expletive] cursed planet with partial dentures,” the complaint reads.

Agents from the FBI and Mahoning Valley Violent Crimes Task Force arrested Ellis on Friday at his Ivy Hill apartment. He didn’t deny sending the letter, and admitted there was “a possibility that [he] could show up and blow the place up.”

Jail records show Ellis has been previously arrested on menacing and disorderly-conduct charges, the latter to which he pleaded no contest in Trumbull County Central District Court.

He pleaded not guilty to the new misdemeanor counts of aggravated menacing and inducing panic in that court Monday and was handed a $1,000 bond.